Where will the IACM 2026 annual meeting take place?

The IACM 2026 annual meeting will be held in the city of Vienna, AUT.

What is the primary focus of the IACM annual meeting?

The annual meeting serves as a platform for scholars and practitioners to present research and exchange ideas on conflict management, covering both theoretical understanding and practical applications.

When does the conference take place?

The conference is scheduled to begin on July 5 and conclude on July 8.

IACM 2026 – 39th Annual Meeting of the International Association for Conflict Management

Name: IACM 2026 – 39th Annual Meeting of the International Association for Conflict Management
Start: 2026-07-05T00:00:00Z
End: 2026-07-08T00:00:00Z
Location: Vienna

Jul 5–8, 2026Vienna, AustriaIn-person

ConcludedRegistration closed

The International Association for Conflict Management (IACM) will host its annual meeting in Vienna, Austria. This gathering serves as a crucial platform for scholars and practitioners to present research, exchange ideas, and foster collaborations in the field of conflict management. The event is a cornerstone for advancing theoretical understanding and practical applications in addressing various forms of conflict across different contexts.

Committees & topics

Topics
Conflict Management as a Field of Study and Practice · Negotiation: Theory, Practice, and Cross-Cultural Dynamics · Interpersonal Conflict · Organizational Conflict · Societal Conflict and Social Cohesion · International Conflict and Interstate Disputes · Communication in Conflict Processes · Computer and Information Science in Conflict Management

Why it matters

The annual meeting of the IACM is significant because it brings together a global community dedicated to the study and resolution of conflict. In an increasingly interconnected world, understanding the dynamics of conflict and developing effective management strategies is paramount. The conference in Vienna, AUT, provides a forum for discussing cutting-edge research and innovative approaches to conflict resolution, which can have far-reaching implications for international relations, organizational behavior, and interpersonal interactions.

This event contributes to the broader discourse on peace and stability by facilitating the dissemination of knowledge and the development of new methodologies. Participants will explore topics ranging from negotiation tactics to mediation techniques, and from the psychological underpinnings of conflict to its societal manifestations. The insights shared at this meeting are vital for policymakers, educators, and practitioners working to mitigate disputes and build more resilient communities worldwide.

How to prepare

Delegates preparing for the IACM meeting should focus on developing a robust understanding of current theories in conflict management. Reviewing recent publications in relevant academic journals and familiarizing oneself with the work of key scholars in the field will be beneficial. Consider how your research or practice aligns with contemporary challenges in conflict resolution, such as those arising from geopolitical shifts or technological advancements.

For those presenting, a clear and concise articulation of your research methodology and findings is essential. Be prepared to engage in constructive dialogue and to defend your positions, while also being open to alternative perspectives. Networking is a key component of this event; therefore, preparing an 'elevator pitch' about your work and being ready to discuss potential collaborations can maximize your participation. Understanding the local context of Vienna, AUT, and its historical significance in diplomacy and international relations, could also enrich your experience.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 3 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Austria

As the host nation, AUT provides a neutral and historically significant setting for international dialogue on conflict management.

Role in topic

AUT has a long-standing tradition of neutrality and has often served as a venue for international conferences and diplomatic negotiations. Its capital, Vienna, is home to numerous international organizations, reinforcing its role as a hub for multilateralism and conflict resolution efforts.

United States

Academics and practitioners from USA are significant contributors to conflict management theory and practice.

Role in topic

The USA is a major center for research and education in conflict resolution, with many leading universities and research institutions actively engaged in the field. American scholars often present groundbreaking research and contribute to the development of new theoretical frameworks and practical interventions.

United Kingdom

GBR contributes significantly to both academic and practical aspects of conflict resolution.

Role in topic

The GBR has a strong academic tradition in peace and conflict studies, with several institutions offering specialized programs. British practitioners are also active in international mediation and peacebuilding efforts, bringing valuable real-world experience to the discussions.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Conflict Management as a Field of Study and Practice

Conflict management emerged as a distinct interdisciplinary field in the mid-20th century, drawing on social psychology, industrial relations, international relations, and law. Early foundational work by figures such as Mary Parker Follett in the 1920s, and later Morton Deutsch's cooperation-competition theory in the 1940s-1970s, helped reframe conflict not as pathology but as a manageable feature of social life. The founding of journals such as the Journal of Conflict Resolution (1957) and the establishment of programs like Harvard's Program on Negotiation in the 1980s consolidated the discipline. The core dispute within the field has long been whether conflict should be resolved, transformed, or merely managed — and at what level of analysis. Practitioners debate the balance between distributive bargaining (claiming value) and integrative approaches (creating value), the role of culture and power asymmetries, and how to incorporate emotion, identity, and narrative into otherwise rationalist frameworks. The rise of alternative dispute resolution (ADR), restorative justice, and track-two diplomacy has expanded the toolkit beyond litigation and warfare. Today, conflict management research grapples with hybrid challenges: algorithmic mediation, polarized democracies, climate-driven resource disputes, and protracted civil wars resistant to conventional settlement. The IACM community continues to refine evidence-based interventions while contending with replication concerns and the need for cross-cultural generalizability.

Key players

Negotiation: Theory, Practice, and Cross-Cultural Dynamics

Modern negotiation theory was reshaped by the 1981 publication of Fisher and Ury's 'Getting to Yes,' which popularized principled, interest-based bargaining and contrasted it with positional haggling. Earlier work by Walton and McKersie (1965) had already distinguished distributive from integrative bargaining, while Raiffa's decision-analytic approach in the 1980s brought formal modeling to the table. These traditions converged into the contemporary negotiation curriculum taught in business, law, and diplomacy schools worldwide. Key ongoing debates concern the role of cultural variation (high- vs. low-context communication, individualist vs. collectivist orientations), the influence of gender and identity on outcomes, the ethics of deception and information asymmetry, and the impact of digital and asynchronous channels on bargaining behavior. Empirical work has documented systematic biases — anchoring, reactive devaluation, overconfidence — that depart from rational-actor predictions, while behavioral economics has supplied richer models of preferences and framing. Current frontiers include AI-assisted negotiation agents, large-scale multi-party climate and trade talks, and negotiations under conditions of deep mistrust or active hostilities. Researchers increasingly examine how preparation, relationship, and process design shape outcomes as much as substantive offers.

Key players

Interpersonal Conflict

Interpersonal conflict — disputes between individuals in family, workplace, or community settings — has been studied systematically since the social-psychological experiments of Kurt Lewin, Muzafer Sherif, and Morton Deutsch in the mid-20th century. The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (1974) and Rahim's Organizational Conflict Inventory (1983) operationalized individual conflict styles along dimensions of assertiveness and cooperativeness, generating decades of empirical work on antecedents and outcomes. Core debates address whether conflict styles are stable traits or situational responses, how attachment, emotion regulation, and personality interact with conflict behavior, and whether 'task' conflict can be productively separated from 'relationship' conflict — a distinction that meta-analyses have repeatedly complicated. Cross-cultural research has questioned the universality of Western avoidance-confrontation framings, particularly in honor and face cultures. Contemporary work focuses on digital-era interpersonal conflict (online incivility, remote-work friction), the role of microaggressions and identity-based disputes, and evidence-based interventions in couples therapy, mediation, and restorative practices in schools and workplaces.

Key players

Organizational Conflict

The study of organizational conflict grew out of industrial relations and organizational behavior research from the 1950s onward, with Pondy's 1967 process model and Thomas's 1976 framework establishing how disputes unfold inside firms. The field initially focused on labor-management relations and grievance procedures, then broadened to encompass intra-team conflict, interdepartmental disputes, and the design of organizational dispute systems (Ury, Brett, and Goldberg, 1988). A central debate concerns whether conflict harms or helps performance. Influential work by Karen Jehn and others distinguished task, relationship, and process conflict, suggesting moderate task conflict could improve decision quality — though subsequent meta-analyses by De Dreu and Weingart and others found generally negative effects, with contingencies based on team type, trust, and conflict management norms. Related research examines psychological safety, voice, silence, and the role of leadership in channeling disagreement constructively. Today's organizational-conflict agenda includes hybrid and remote work, generational and demographic diversity, whistleblowing and ethics disputes, the design of internal ombuds and ADR systems, and conflict in platform and gig-economy contexts where traditional employment frameworks do not apply.

Key players

International Conflict and Interstate Disputes

The systematic study of international conflict accelerated after World War II, with Quincy Wright's 'A Study of War' (1942), the Correlates of War project (founded 1963), and the rise of bargaining models of war (Fearon, 1995). Realist, liberal, and constructivist traditions debate whether interstate conflict stems primarily from anarchy and power distributions, from domestic-political or institutional failures, or from identities and norms. Empirical findings on the democratic peace, economic interdependence, and the decline of interstate war since 1945 have shaped both scholarship and policy. The core contemporary disputes center on great-power competition between the United States and China, Russia's war against Ukraine and its implications for European security, conflicts in the Middle East, and the resilience or erosion of the post-1945 multilateral order. Debates within the field address the role of nuclear weapons, cyber and gray-zone operations, the conditions for successful mediation, and the effectiveness of sanctions and deterrence. The current environment features simultaneous major armed conflicts, contested global governance, and the rapid diffusion of military technology, including autonomous systems. Researchers increasingly examine how civil and international conflicts interact and how mediation can succeed where battlefield stalemates persist.

Key players

Communication in Conflict Processes

Communication scholarship has long been central to conflict research, from Shannon and Weaver's information-theoretic models (1949) to the interpretive turn associated with Watzlawick and the Palo Alto group, which emphasized that one 'cannot not communicate' and that relational framing often matters more than literal content. Subsequent work in dispute resolution highlighted active listening, reframing, and narrative mediation as core techniques, while linguistic and discourse-analytic traditions examined how parties construct grievance and legitimacy. Key debates address the conditions under which dialogue de-escalates or hardens positions, the role of apology and acknowledgment in reconciliation, and how mediated and computer-mediated communication change conflict dynamics — including reduced nonverbal cues, asynchronous escalation, and the disinhibition effect online. Strategic communication, public diplomacy, and information operations form a parallel literature on state-level conflict communication. Current priorities include disinformation and influence operations, AI-generated content in political disputes, deliberative-democracy experiments, and the role of platform design in shaping civic discourse. Researchers also examine how journalists, mediators, and leaders frame conflicts in ways that enable or foreclose settlement.

Key players

Computer and Information Science in Conflict Management

The intersection of computer and information science with conflict management has grown rapidly since the 1990s, when negotiation support systems and online dispute resolution (ODR) pioneered by platforms such as SquareTrade for early eBay disputes demonstrated that software could mediate large-scale, low-value conflicts. Game-theoretic and multi-agent systems research, work on automated negotiation agents (e.g., the Automated Negotiating Agents Competition), and decision-analytic tools have produced a substantial technical literature. Key debates concern the appropriate role of algorithms and AI in dispute resolution: whether machine mediators can be fair, transparent, and culturally competent; how to handle bias in training data; and how to preserve due process and human dignity in automated systems. Computational social science has expanded the empirical toolkit, enabling analysis of conflict dynamics in large text corpora, social-media data, and event datasets like GDELT and ACLED. Current frontiers include generative AI in mediation and legal advice, algorithmic content moderation and its conflict implications, cyber-conflict and attribution, and the governance of autonomous systems in armed conflict. The field is also confronting questions about data sovereignty, privacy, and the ethics of using AI in high-stakes interpersonal and international disputes.

Key players